Thursday, October 13, 2005

I am not resigned

I rarely read and watch the news today. I stay long enough to get the essential gist of the story, the facts. When it comes to statements of politicians I just mute the volume. Commentators on the other hand are better read than heard. Somehow their arguments seem to lose their essence when they speak. They have a tendency to drown in their own arguments.
I have become desentisived against the media and its cohorts. Have I become distant to the problems then that has been happening? I do not think so. I knew they exsist and I know they have to be dealt with one way or the other. However, It has been also apparent to me that it is critical to do what is right and have one's wits about and not to be used by other people with agendas or delusional individuals - idealists who think theirs is the only road to salvation.
I am wary of journalists who have a tendency to sensationalize the news. Why do they do this? To up the ratings of their network or to increase the sales of their newspaper or to influence events with the notion that they have the right idea to save the nation.
Mistrusting politicians is a given and it should be a matter of habit. This is more crucial when dealing with the religious and self-styled political revolutionaries. They have their motives and before they attain the practice is to wrap it in altruistic ideals.
One does not have to look beyond one's vision to have an altruistic quest. How many of the self-appointed saviours of society even treat humanely or with equity people close to them. Not just the masses but people close to them. I am sorry, I just do not buy the hype and cause they are peddling. I refuse to be firewood that will propel their political movement or cause.
Question everything and never take anything for granted.
Ambrose Bierce was being true and sarcastic when he wrote:

"REVOLUTION, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. . . . the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch."

I view causes and intent with extreme caution. But what is left to do? Does one just submit to the futility of it all?
No.

"The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints." -Will Durant, American Historian

I know but I do not approve. And I am not resigned. -Edna St Vincent Millay